Lostentry

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Two and a half years do make a difference

In August 2008 I attempted my first conversion of a Maerklin locomotive to digitial. I read some stuff online, but I wasn't really quite sure what I was doing, so I opted to using an Uhlenbrock 75200 decoder that doesn't require disassemby of the motor. I tried to do the minimum amount of modifications to that locomotive to make it work with Maerklin's digitial system. The image on the right shows the inside of this Maerklin 3075 locomotive, a BR216 of the German Bundesbahn, after the conversion. This locomotive has a large flat collector AC motor typical for older Maerklin locomotives.

I was never really happy with that conversion. The motor ran very rough and loud. So after having done a few more conversions and increasingly getting more adventurous, last week I decided to re-do BR216. This time I used an ESU Lokpilot 3.0 decoder. Since that decoder only supports DC motors I needed to install a permanent magnet and disassemble the motor, which was a good opportunity to give it a thorough cleaning, too. As is standard in my recent conversions, I installed a NEM 562 plug for the decoder, so that I can easily replace the decoder if I feel the need at some time in the future. The 16V bulbs got replaced with yellow LEDs that were painted black all around except the front to prevent light leakage into the cab. This was the first time I tried using LEDs in a conversion, and it worked reasonably well, though next time I'll try extra-bright warm-white LEDs instead of standard issue yellow, if I can find them. I'm also tempted to use SMD LEDs and glue them in place.

When I did the first conversion, I didn't have that many supplies, but now it's hard to see the tablet under all the stuff.